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December 29 DEEP THOUGHTS...BY MARCUS AURELIUS HANDYRecently, I had made up my mind to be a better person, but then I realized I had just taken a B-12 tablet. Life is more interesting when you have things to do. That's why procrastination is such a satisfying habit.
Reading this has helped to better understand the literary tradition of the Bible. This is, not in a Biblical sense, but in a literary sense, a book of proverbs, epigrams, advice, observations, all proffering an uncomplicated wisdom. It is very like the Bible in that M.A. has a lot of ideas that also show up in the Bible.
Comparing Meditations to the Bible is a college course in itself, so I will just give you some of my favorite meds...um...meditations: Book II, #1: Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness -- all of them due to the offenders' ignorance of what is good or evil...none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Book III, #7: Never value the advantages derived from anything involving breach of faith, loss of self-respect, hatred, suspicion, or execration of others, or the desire for something which has to be veiled... Book III, #9: Treat with respect the power you have to form an opinion. Book VI, #14: The vulgar confine their admiration chiefly to things of an elementary order,...But the man who values a soul that is rational and universal and social no longer cares for anything else... You get the idea. Good stuff. And it's portable, roughly the same size as WHY I WRITE, but a bit thicker. II/1 and III/7 I re-read quite often since my life as a teacher and caregiver-in-training is chaotic at times. I actually have 2 editions of Meditations. This one and an old Harvard Classics version that's an imprint of a 1909 edition. It's combined with 3 works by Plato -- Apology, Phaedo, and Crito, as well as The Golden Sayings of Epictetus. Golden Sayings is pretty cool. That one's organized in chunks with roman numerals, whereas Meditations was by Books. The translation of GS, by Hastings Crossley (ooooh, pompous much?), sounds like a cross between Alexander Pope and John Milton. It requires significant concentration to keep up with the syntax if you're not used to it. If you're ever feeling intellectually stunted, Meditations is a good way to kick-start your right brain instant messaging your left brain. A year ago: Barnes&Noble After-Christmas Mini-Spree Technorati Tags: literature,Latin,Marcus Aurelius Antoninus,Plato,Socrates,philosophy,classics,Harold Bloom,ancient history
December 28 ACHERON – THE MAN, THE GOD, THE FIANCE, THE BOOK*****BIG, MAJOR, TELL-ALL SPOILERS*****
Have you ever read a book that just exhausted you mentally? The scope and breadth of the story filled every part of your mind, swept you up into a maelstrom, and ran your emotions ragged?
Well, this isn’t that book…
***** SPOILERS*****
Just kidding. Holy Mother of Almighty Jesus Christ, the book wasn’t just big and heavy, the story was BIG! And HEAVY!!! I was repulsed, disgusted, angry, frustrated, incredulous, and many other adjectives as well – and that was just the first 10 chapters! It was so spirit-crushingly spirit-crushing, it will crush your spirit!!!
Acheron’s human life was emotionally squalid. Squalid, I tell you! If you hadn’t learned to love him so much in the other Dark-Hunter books, you would never have stuck with it to see him to godhood. And his human life showed me something I’ve strongly felt for a long time – people are shite. They can’t help it. They are feeble-minded and at the mercy of their worst compulsions. More than anything, people love to enjoy the fact that others are suffering and not them.
By the time you get to the second part of the book, where’s he’s coming into his godhood and becomes a trainer for the Dark-Hunters, your body is so relieved to have a reprieve from beatings and scalding verbal abuse and outright torture. You start to breath a little easier as the pages go by and he’s talking with whoever and not being hit. Even just arguing is a relief.
The best part of the story for me was the last 3 or so chapters. Those were the most fun. He and Tory are a lot of fun together. I don’t agree with a lot of the plot development as far as their relationship, but the overall logic is sound. She appears to be the reincarnation (the book never says that, but it should) of the “Librarian/Historian/Guardian of The Gods” of Atlantis. And his mother likes her! Talk about “monster-in-law”!!! I was just as confused as Ash as to why he was attracted to her. I thought he couldn’t get attracted to human women. A lot of threads got unwound that I thought were knotted tightly. If you ask me, Artemis let him off really easy. Maybe she realized that she could no longer subjugate Acheron – not with his girlfriend and mother protecting him. Also, it was too easy how he mustered up the gumption to tell Artie to naff off. I think it was all in the focus. He doesn’t have backbone problems when it comes to protecting others, and apparently Tory was enough of an issue to where he could get the “heifer-goddess” of his back.
Artemis got off lightly considering Acheron has Savitar, Sin, his mother, and Katra at his back. Katra can absorb the powers of gods. She’s like the “Sham-Wow” of Atlantis.
I would have loved to read about a Dark-Hunter bachelor party, but you know they can’t get together without their powers waning in each others’ presence. Which is one of the off-kilter details about Acheron and Tory’s wedding. Several DHs were in attendance. But really, you couldn’t have Acheron get married and NOT have the DHs there. Like he said – the shock value alone is probably worth losing your powers for a couple of hours. Besides, Savitar is there to pick up the slack should any demon or Daimon have a death-wish. He has a Best Man and everything. Dark-Hunter theorists will no doubt go nuts trying to figure out which Bridesmaid/Groomsman will end up a couple. Some are obviously out of it: Simi – duh; Vane, Kyrian, Aimee. But Katherine, a priestess, and Styxx – why not. Urian and Cyn, Tori’s nymphet cousin who looks like Artemis. Pam and Savitar. Now remember – this is just conjecture on my part. There’s nothing in the book to suggest that any of these characters are going to get together.
What Kenyon has done with Greek mythology is frikkin’ amazing. What she’s done with Atlantis and their gods is one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever read – in any genre. As soon as I finished ACHERON, within the minute, I had picked up ONE SILENT NIGHT – the book of Strykerius, a.k.a. “loser”, according to Xirena, Simi’s sister. Kenyon really wove a web of demon/Daimon action which was difficult to keep up with. I don’t mind. Nick was prominent in this book. He’s got an extremely cool story arc. There were no less than 4 pantheons featured in this book: Atlantean, Greek, Egyptian, Sumerian. Does “Apollite” count? The only bunch who didn’t show up were the Weres. But word down the pipeline is that Aimee and Fang are going to get their own story.
Another interesting development is that the bloodlines are mixing. Charonte and gallu demon. Atlantean and human. Dark-Hunter and daimon. It’s putting the pantheons at odds with each other. Oh, and one of the other cool things about the DH world – Nick stuck it to Satara, Stryker’s evil sister. I’d been dying for someone to bitch-slap her through time and space to where she’d become her own ancestor. Way-to-go Nick!! Stabbed her in the gut and made it hurt. He killed her real dead-like.
So Ash’s household now consists of him and Tory, Simi, Xirena, Alexion and Danger, and Urian. He may or may not have replaced the pet dragons. God or not, there’s nothing sexier than a tall man with an never-ending supply of no-limit credit cards. In the pro/con ledger of life, ACHERON – man, god, boyfriend, husband – is definitely in the pro column.
ACHERON: HALF-MAN, HALF-GOD, TWICE-BORN, ALL-CURSED
December 26 WHY I WRITE -- BONDING WITH ORWELLPENGUIN BOOKS GREAT IDEAS SERIES
Welcome to the first installment of "Portable Feasts", a category highlighting purse-friendly books. The idea is almost too simple -- I keep books in my purse so I tend to look for small, thin tomes that give bang for the buck. Penguin Books, bless their hearts, have come out with a series of ...well...small, thin tomes that are stimulating, yet discreet. The 2 books from the series that I have are 18 cm. x 11 cm. x1 cm. Here's a bit of blurb from the back of my Orwell book: Now PENGUIN brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization... Sounds good to me! The paperback series has a different design for each book but uses the same colors to identify it as a series -- brownish-red, white, black. Very elegant. There's 12 books in the series. Any-hoo, An excellent collection is WHY I WRITE, a collection of essays by George Orwell. George Orwell would have made a great drinking buddy. He's such a keen observer of communication patterns between people and institutions. Reading his essay "Why I Write" is like looking into a pond of crystal clear, mirror-smooth water. Not only does he see things clearly, but his writing style is blunt and passionate. Being English, he can't help a bit of long-windedness, but he maneuvers jargon and vernacular quite deftly. He's also a very self-aware writer. He knows his strengths and weaknesses. When I read WHY I WRITE, I feel like he's talking to me person-to-person. I can picture him throwing up his arms and tearing out his hair, flicking a cigarette away. The book also contains the amazing POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE -- one of the most straight-shooting essays ever written about how crap political jargon is. Every person considering going for public office should read P&TEL and ANIMAL FARM. If that doesn't put you off running for office, you can see how you're going to end up. The book is like a shot of vitamin B-12 to the brain. You can feel blood flowing through your brain. Realization sparks and bounces. Ideas like popcorn popping in your head. Great ideas!
ART & THE ART OF COFFEE TABLE BOOKS (CTBs) II
Massive books in my living room that could pass for furniture: CHURCHES AND CATHEDRALS OF LONDON by Stephen Humphrey & James Morris (Foreword by Andrew Lloyd Webber) MILTON'S PARADISE LOST/Illus. by Gustave Dore THE MUSEE D'ORSAY by Alexandra Bonfante-Warren Sadly, these books are out of print (at least by Amazon.com's reckoning), but they are probably available through eBay.
The first two I found on the sale display at our local bookstore. Churches&Cathedrals I got for my birthday from a dear friend. C&CoL has very good quality color photos. There's plenty of wide shots and close-ups of details. Good, tight writing. Even the table of contents is full of photos. I like the page design. Several of the pages have the left edge run in 2-color (cyan, black) and contain extra interesting bits of information. Every photo has something wonderful in it: art, architecture, craftsmanship. I've been to Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, so the pictures pulled memories out of me. I could feel the memories being drawn out of me. I desperately want to go back to England. PARADISE LOST -- first of all, gorgeous cover. Then there's the words! So perfectly crafted. Such magnificent verbal architecture. The illustrations are by Gustave Dore, one of the most acclaimed and in-demand illustrators of books in the 1800s. I love all the place names Milton mentions. Cronian Sea, Delos, Petsora, Cathaian Sea -- names so ancient that they resonate to the vibration of passing time. He even mentions astronomy, describing the alignment of the earth to set up seasons. Mythology, astronomy, geography, the origins of Biblical history -- all conjoined to map the spiritual history of man on earth. Is there a combination of words more woebegotten than "paradise lost"? "Paradise": the best of all possible worlds. The zenith of contentment. "Lost": sunken into despair, heartbroken, wretched from knowing what we had and the pain of realizing our own foolishness cost us that zenith. One of the best titles ever. MUSEE D'ORSAY: Truthfully, I'm indifferent to the Impressionists. I can admire and appreciate the talent and creativity and all that, but at the end of the day, I'd rather hang with the German Romantics and the Northern Europeans. The closest I've come to "liking" Impressionist-type art is El Greco. He's not an Impressionist, but you must admit, some of his work, like View of Toledo, has a lot in common with Turner, Monet, or Renoir, even Gaugin. The book itself is grand. Big. Heavy. It's a serving tray. The best way to display this book is laid open on a sturdy music stand. All color plates. This book, as well as the museum it honors, is an impressive catalogue of Impressionist art, early photography and reader-friendly design. Most paintings have easy-to-read captions. Caveat: captions tend to be loaded down with jargon. Personally, I don't mind. I keep a dictionary handy.
December 14 ART & THE ART OF COFFEE TABLE BOOKS (CTBs)Massive books in my living room that could pass for furniture: ROMANTICISM by Jean Clay ESSENTIAL PRE-RAPHAELITES by Lucinda Hawksley (cover image) "Essential" Pre-Raphaelites. Oh, how that word galls me. It's a lovely tome, with all the major paintings and plenty of biographical "chisme" to satisfy. It's just that word "essential". How dim do they think I am? Ordinarily, I stay away from -- eschew, even -- "essential" or "the complete" or even the patronizing "selected works of". Double ick! However, to be fair, some people need that. They need that flashlight down the path of cultural knowledge. Whatever works, I guess. Lord knows, I have no business being a snob. I was fortunate enough some time back to vakay in London for a few days. I went to the "old" Tate and saw some of the major Pre-Rafs. Wow! What a difference. Photographs just don't do them justice. The colors on the canvases were so rich you could almost taste them. Delicious, mouth-watering reds and purples. Blues that hugged you. Sensous, sensual greens that begged to be stroked. (Not allowed, btw.) My favorites are Rossetti, Frederick, Lord Leighton, and "Love's Shadow" by Frederick Sandys. (Hmmm, what is this weird attachment to Fredericks?) The expression and body language of the sitter in "Shadow" could be me. That's my attitude. My expression. My teeth gritting in vexation. And I want that gorgeous bracelet!! It would take 50 pounds of extensions to get my hair looking like that, though. Rossetti must have had a hairdresser as a collaborator. For a painter, he does great hair. Some painters do great hands, some lovely skin, some do amazing fabric. DGR does hair like nobody's business! And he loves to stick one of these doodads in: The Jean Clay book is falling apart, but it's one of my most treasured books. I first read it about 20 years ago when my dad brought it for me from our local library. I read it cover to cover -- 3 times that year. I drooled over the Ingres' and Fuselis and Goyas. I had admired some Goya drawings in a petite gallery in Bath and I liked his sarcastic paintings of frumpy Spanish royalty. My favorite chapter is Ch. V -- Construction by Assemblage. A popular theme for this period was ancient Greek buildings in ruins. This represented a rebellion against formal classical Greek themes such as those painted by Jacques-Louis David. View OATH OF THE HORATII by Jacques-Louis David (www.oldmasterpieces.com)
See how cleanly rendered the arches and pillars are. Even the floor looks clean. An idealized, even deified, backdrop of ancient Greek architecture, or even Gothic architecture painted as if it were current, was a characteristic of the neoclassical period to show that Greek philosophy was held in high esteem. The angular precision of David's Death of Socrates or Ingres' Virgil Reading From The Aneid, which looks like a painting of statues/not people, showed more effectively than telling the superiority of reason and logic. Ruins With a Scene of The Apostle Paul Preaching by Panini (http://cgfa.floridaimaging.com/index.html)
In the Romantic period of art, you could see the continued use of Greek pillars and buildings, but instead of being featured as tidy interiors, they were featured as ruined exteriors. Foliage curling around pockmarked pillars, severed, arches drowning in vines, and collapsing temples. The symbolism is so thick, you could cut it with a...a...a symbolism-cutting device. And the book's cover! Oh my God, the cover! It's a Friedrich -- my favorite Friedrich! Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer. An iconic image representing self-determinism. It's the one where a man stands at the peak of a mountain and looks out over other mountain tops floating in a sea of mist. It's a rather obvious message to the old order: Monarchs! I don't need no stinking monarchs! I can be the hero of my own life story. The back cover is a Goya -- The Crockery Vendor. The composition is simple, yet clever. All the males are facing away
__________________________________________________________________________________________ www.allposters.com Find your favorite Old Master paintings for purchase. December 07 Skippyjon Jones: A Siamese Cat Who Thinks He's a Chihuahua
Remember those cartoons about Ralph, the little boy who would become consumed by his fantasies? Well, imagine Ralph is a Siamese cat named Skippyjon Jones and he likes to affect a Mexican accent and be a hero. The first book is wonderful! He is banished to his room and goes into "Ralph" mode to become El Skippito.
I noticed at www.amazon.com that a couple of reviewers took offense at the nod to Mexican culture. Considering how the language of urban African-Americans has pervaded even corporate-speak, I really don't see what they are complaining about. Surburban children of this generation LIKE to be seen as "gangstas" and "bangers" and "pimps". If you're looking for insults to one's culture, do yourself a favor and start there. I'm a Mexican-American who grew up on the border where people don't have a sense of humor about themselves. But that's because they are badly educated, naive, unworldly. Those of us that have been out in the world a bit can see the humor. But this was not meant to be a rant about self-conscious, PC-obsessed types. This book is friendly, full of love, good humor, wonderful dancing language and beautiful artwork. If you're offended, that's your problem, not the book's.
If you buy the toy/book set, be warned. They are quite small. I bought the big doll separately and these two hardcovers. Since I'm Mex/Am, it really works out well for me to do the voices. That's the fun part. The thing about reading stories aloud -- you can't be preoccupied with your looks. If you're afraid to look like a dork, forget it. You have to sing where you're supposed to sing. Yell where you're supposed to yell. Make faces, gestures, MOVE! If you sit perched on a chair and read like a prim schoolmarm, you "lose the dressing room", as they say in soccer. MUMMY TROUBLE, btw, comes with a CD. Cool! OTHER SKIPPYJON JONES BOOKS:
[These might not all be story books. COLOR CRAZY, when I saw it at the bookstore, was a very basic picture book.] The books are available at the usual major booksellers. AN ELITE OPS TITILLATING TIDBIT COMPLIMENTS OF LORA LEIGH
WOOH-to-the-HOOH!! Guess what LL is doing. Gawann, guess! Fine. I'll just tell you. She's putting out a short Elite Ops story. I have no ideas who it's about, but it's Elite Ops and that's pretty much all I need.
Click on the image to go to Leigh's publications website to sign up for your copy of NIGHT HAWK, or click on this link. After reading WILD CARD, my guess for the hero is either Nicolai Steele or Jordan Malone. Maybe even...naw, he's not a SEAL...Nathan's brother? Hmmm...I'll have to read WILD CARD for the 3rd time to see if my predictions hold water. Sherrilyn Kenyon did this a couple of years ago. She published an e-mail subscription short story about Nick Gautier. These subscription short stories are wonderful instruments for building community among an author's fans. From what I've seen on the web, we fans get giddy about these freebies. RELATED POSTS:
December 06 ODD BITS ON A TRIP TO BARNES & NOBLE
On a recent trip to SA and B&N at North Star Mall, I picked up my usual soccer magazines: 442, CHAMPIONS; yet another bollocking anthology of so-so rough drafts The Magical Christmas Cat, and a major waste of time entitled A Loeb Classical Library Reader. Big commercial book stores like B&N and Borders specialize in paperbacks. They cater to the lowest common denominator of print buyers. If it keeps them in business, fine. But once in a while, can't they take the high road? I've been assembling my Loeb Library of Greek and Latin classics wish list for a while. There's a lot of them. And they're a bit pricey, but with good reason. The series is beautifully designed -- green for Greek classics and red for Latin classics. They've even got a new series, done up in gorgeous royal blue, of Renaissance classics. They're just GOR-geous! But are they anywhere to be seen in the land of Danielle Steele and Nicholas Sparks? Pffft! You're more likely to find an entire shelf up front devoted to shiny new copies of Grooming Toenails for Dummies than a beautiful, hardcover collection of Aristotle's lectures to his son (Nichomachean Ethics -- just in case you thought I was just kidding). So leaning sideways reading paperback titles on the Philosophy shelves, I found the itsy-bitsy ALCLR. Awwww...It's so petite and cute. And petite. How amazingly clever of the powers that be at Loeb to condense a thousand years of wisdom into a book the size of a veal cutlet. Truly, if it was any thinner, it would only have one side. It's a thinner book than Thoughts About Great Opera by Don Rickles. It's insulting how compact it is. It's lovingly ensconced in my purse. Next time I'm stuck at a light or in traffic, or in line at the slowest McDonald's in South Texas, I have something to help me pass the tedious moments. Some years back, maybe about 5 or 6, B&N had the entire collection of Loeb classics for sale. The display shelves were set up between a bargain shelf and the magazine section. I was there for almost two hours. No one looked at the books except to be careful to not knock them down as they went for the magazines or cut-rate cookbooks. Sigh... I picked up several to look them over and got very excited that they were a combination of English and Latin or English and Greek. I don't read Greek, but I caught the bug to learn. And I've slowly been picking up Latin from various sources. (Did you know, there are advocates for dissing Latin as a course of study? Their reasoning is that it's inconsequential in this age of texting and IM-ing. May Zeus and Thoth get these cretins in a cage match and let the smackdown begin!) I regret not buying any of them. I only had enough for my soccer magazine at the time. Have never seen them in any of the stores since. ANTHOLOGY ANGST, Part 3 [****SPOILERS****] Oi. It's no simcha when my favorite authors collaborate for an anthology, especially when most of the stories are lacking and there's only one that sounds like a polished story. So far, out of all the Lora Leigh anthologies I've bought, hers are usually the only stories that sound professionally finished. By that I mean, the story sounds complete. It has good details and sufficient character development. When romance readers love an author, they LOOOVVVE an author and they want something constantly. A voracious lot, them. Collections are, I think, for those hungry fans. To placate them until the next big novel comes out. It certainly seems that way with Leigh. TMCC has a beautiful cover: the cat is adorable and preternaturally fluffy; the snowball is lovely; the colors are rich and vivid. The stories inside, like rolls of LifeSavers(R), are sweet. The ones by Singh, McCarthy, and Winstead Jones are mildly romantic, worthy of a Silhouette Desire. Sweet Dreams by Winstead Jones is the most novel-like of the four. The dream sequences are like short stories within a short story. That's fantastic. Of course I bought the book because of Christmas Heat -- Noble Chavin's story. He's a breed enforcer that got shot during the end of DAWN'S AWAKENING in the big party scene towards the end of the book. In some of the breed books, Leigh has a character mention that the breeds chose their own names, for example, Mercury Warrant, Lawe Justice. 'TF! I'd love for her to put in some exposition on how they choose their names. LORA LEIGH ANTHOLOGIES (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER)
There might be others, but those are the ones I have. MY LOEB WISH LIST
LATIN CLASSICS GREEK CLASSICS 442 & CHAMPIONS 442 is available through Haymarket Publishing, as is CHAMPIONS, I think. 442 has an online magazine and CHAMPIONS is accessible through www.uefa.com -- which is a fantastic site. UEFA Champions League is becoming bigger than the World Cup. Let's face it, in the world of soccer, Europe is king. It totters and trips and makes an arrogant ass of itself most of the time. Players from Africa and Eastern Europe are usurping places usually reserved for natives (center forwards -- the glory boys). Americans(!!!), coming from a country whose policy is to let everyone in, are excelling in Europe at goalkeeping -- keeping everything out! What massive irony. But at the end of the day, Europe is finishing school. It's the trenches. It's college prep. It's the corporate HQ of everything soccer. If you can make it there... 442 is more general. It's about mostly English soccer, but includes a supplement with score stats for all major soccer-playing countries. I love this magazine because it often has articles that are super hilarious. Even some of the pictures are kind of funny. Extreme close-ups of major figures. Like so close you can count their pores and stubble hairs. At the back of the magazine, they always have a famous figure pick their First XI and subs. They interview celebrities and get their take on the game. Robert Plant reminiscing about Wolverhampton. The guy that plays Baldrick on BLACKADDER talking about his team. Joe Elliott from Def Leppard on Sheffield Wednesday vs Sheffield Utd. Players answer questions. Just tons of good stuff. Top humor writing as well. When I first started buying the mag in 1998, just after France98 where I fell in major crush with Michael Owen, it was an import that cost $4.95. Now, ten years later, it's $9.50. I stopped buying it monthly and just concentrated on key points in the year: season opener issue with supplement, awards nomination/winners issues, whenever a hot player was on the cover, like Michael Owen or Raul. CHAMPIONS is $9.50, too. 442 is monthly and CHAMPIONS is 6 times a year. Considering that jocks are not readers as a rule, both magazines are reading-intensive -- long articles in teensy print, like Vanity Fair. If I have a chance to buy both together, then I'm done. One caveat: the back of 442 contains a lot of pornographic screen images for purchase for cell phones. Also, you can order back issues, subscribe, and shop for soccer boots.
ALL PUBLICATIONS MENTIONED IN THIS POST ARE AVAILABLE THROUGH THE USUAL ONLINE SHOPS: AMAZON, BORDERS, BARNES & NOBLE. |
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